Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/510424
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS By Jason Stanford Islamicterroristsmassa- cre 12 employees of Charlie Hedbo, a magazine in Paris that satirized the Islamic prophet, and the Western world rises up to defend free- dom of expression. The car- toons of Muhammad were de- liberately calculated to offend Muslims, but gosh darn it, if you have to choose between free speech and terrorists, then "Je suis Charlie." Islamic terrorists unsuc- cessfully attempt a similar at- tack in Garland, Texas where activists deliberately try to of- fend with a Muhammad car- toon contest, and suddenly ev- eryone is happy to blame those who provoked the attack. No less than the editorial board of The New York Times pro- claims that what was being practiced in Garland was re- ally "hate speech." You're either for free speech, or you're for censorship. And if you're not for freedom of ex- pression by those whose opin- ions you find offensive, then what you're really for is free- dom of self-expression and not the angry dinner-table dis- cussion that is democracy. As much as this pains me, the First Amendment applies to everyone, even folks like Pam Geller. Geller is what could loosely be called the "brains" behind the Garland cartoon contest. She knew what she was doing. In staging a contest to draw cartoons of Muhammad, she was not just deliberately of- fending the religious views of Muslims. She was daring Is- lamic terrorists to take their best shot. "I knew what the stakes were when I started plan- ning the cartoon contest. But it had to be done," she said af- terward. "The jihadis had to be shown that at least some Americans will not bow to vio- lent intimidation." It's hard not to sympathize with the poor mayor of Gar- land, who offered to pour Ms. Geller a tall glass of Shut The Hell Up juice. "Certainly in hindsight, we as a commu- nity would be better off if she hadn't [held it in Garland]," the Mayor said. "Her actions put my police officers, my cit- izens and others at risk. Her program invited an incendiary reaction. She picked my com- munity, which does not sup- port in any shape, passion or form, her ideology." It's that last sentence that made me blink. If a particu- lar ideology is not shared by a community does it enjoy lesser protection from the First Amendment? If Robert Map- plethorpe could turn obsceni- ties with a crucifix into consti- tutionally protected art, then is an offensive cartoon any less worthy of protection because terrorists will try to kill you for drawing it? And if someone is willing to kill to silence an opinion, then isn't protecting that offensive expression the most patriotic thing to do? To be sure, I do not rel- ish the idea of wannabe ji- hadis rolling around Texas in a Chevrolet looking for people to shoot, but when a single cop guarding a cartoon contest can put down a terrorist at- tack, maybe the Islamic State has picked on the wrong state. There are enough guns in Texas for every man, woman, and child to have at least two. The only danger Texas faces from entry-level terrorists is if everyone is reloading at the same time. Maybe if the terrorists had killed some cartoonists in Texas as they did in France we'd see this more as an attack on our freedoms than just an- other example of conservatives gone wild. Maybe if the targets seemed less gleeful at inciting a ter- rorist attack in the middle of an otherwise peaceful commu- nity for their own self-aggran- dizement we might find them more sympathetic. But there's no "maybe" about this: If someone would attack Geller for saying the stupid things she says, then it's up to all of us to defend her right to do so. She might be an unsightly pimple on the body politic who deliberately mocks what some hold sacred to make a juvenile political point and draw attention to herself, but she's also an American. The problem with limit- ing free speech protections to smart people of good judg- ment is that it's supposed to apply to Americans. We're fat and lazy and read at a 7th-grade level. If the Bill of Rights only applied to the wor- thy among us, it would only protect our mothers and not all of them. I'm a First Amendment kinda guy. Je suis Pam Geller. JasonStanfordisaregular contributor to the Austin American-Statesman, a Democratic consultant and a Truman National Security Project partner. You can email him at stanford@oppresearch. com and follow him on Twitter @JasStanford. Commentary Islamic attacks and the First Amendment Cartoonist's take Tonight's Tea Party Patriots guest will be Tehama County Supervisor Candy Carlson, who represents the 2nd District. Some outside- the-box thoughts on the Gover- nor's across-the- board mandated 25 percent cut- back in water us- age. Hey, Moon- beam: I got your 25 percent cutback right here. To be hon- est, I have not heard one logi- cal, fact-based argument as to why Red Bluff residents and water users should have to re- duce water usage one iota. That water comes from deep underground—so what's the problem? It goes without saying that, for all county residents on wells, our usage is determined primarily by how much money we care to spend on the elec- tricity to pump the wet stuff out of the ground for our per- sonal and property needs. I have Department of Water Re- sources graphs that show a modest decline in the ground water levels but nothing that's likely to impact most folks. Furthermore, when one prop- erty owner uses his or her own best interests and desires, lim- ited by the aforementioned costs, I don't see the imperative to even think about abiding or conforming to some bureau- crat's arbitrary number pulled out of his, well, hat. In other words, what re- search, what data, what spe- cific conditions are being ap- plied to each water district? What objective analysis has anyone presented that can re- liably guide, for instance, the Red Bluff water district to a de- termination that—due to micro and macro measurements—25, 15, or even 10 percent is the reasonable target? Why any target locally? I'm open to per- suasion. However, until I read that our local and state water situation is so severe or seri- ous that foolish and pointless efforts to restore salmon in places where they've vanished; or that efforts to manage the delta to protect the bait fish called smelt; or that ludicrous releases of water down streams to flow uselessly into the Pa- cific Ocean—these water use fanatics have no business man- dating anything for anybody. Until such practices, which use fully half of all available surface water, cease, I won't believe it's a real crisis. Simi- larly, I don't want to hear one darn word about the human- caused global warming crisis for which we are all mandated to pay, or undergo radical life- style changes to "address"— not until the rich, powerful, elitist overlords and advocates give up their private jets that fly halfway around the world to attend global warming/climate change/pixie dust meetings. The terrorist attacks on the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Texas, together with the mind-boggling reactions by many of the "victim-mon- gering" left, have shown that the organizer, Pamela Geller, was right. She is the president of American Freedom Defense Initiative and a blogger at At- lasshrugs.com. Look up, by ti- tle, "Pamela Geller's Critics Are Proving Her Point" by David French, "Free Speech vs. Hate Speech?" by John Hinderaker, "Progressives Love Anti-Reli- gious Art—as Long as It's Anti- Christian" by Jonah Goldberg, "Victim-Blaming Inverts Cause and Effect of Jihadist Terror- ism" by Ian Tuttle. Those are all under the "Islam" label, at DonPolson.blogspot.com. On May 5 I re-posted several examples of the kind of art and cartoons at issue going back to the original Danish cartoons— the often viewed "Muhammed" with a bomb merged in his tur- ban, by Kurt Westergaard—up to some of the Charlie Hebdo images and others. The titles of the posts say much about the controversy: "Make the world safe for ridicule of Islam," "Is- lam is for laughs," and "This blog stands for freedom of ex- pression." The reason that those ask- ing, "Why display something that offends Muslims" don't get the real issue at hand is that they apparently think that the sole purpose of the cartoons is to come up with myriad ways to display the middle finger to Islam and its adherents. No, they intend to make se- rious statements worthy of de- bate. One could logically ask why, over the last 5 years, have liberal/progressive editorial cartoonists come up with end- less ways to mock, insult, car- icature and ridicule conser- vatives, Republicans and Tea Party advocates? The answer: Those cartoonists—as well as leftists in the news media, ac- ademia, the entertainment in- dustry, etc—have made ob- servations, formulated argu- ments/opinions and expressed their perspective of those on the conservative side. They've had no regard whatsoever for how offensive they might be. Also look for "Pamela Geller Calls Out Cowardly Conserva- tives" at a Breitbart.com link, also on my blog. In either place, you'll see how the politically correct In- ternet police make images "dis- appear." When the Breitbart in- terview first showed up, the (former Muslim) winner of the "Draw Muhammad" contest topped the article and a dozen or more jpeg images of other entries were interspersed be- low. The winning cartoon re- mains at the top: A fierce look- ing, sword-wielding Muham- mad says "You can't draw me!" while the pencil-wielding hand says, "That's why I draw you." The rest of the images link to an "error" message. Saying that anti-Islam car- toons provoke violent attacks is like saying that baby-killing, late-term abortion doctors pro- voke violence. At least a car- toon never killed anyone. Such drawings represent ideas worthy of debate and contention—essential, cher- ished civic freedoms. The prob- lem, as I see it, is that moder- ate Muslims, who accept a di- verse, pluralistic free society, don't prevail in their own reli- gion—the extremist, murder- ous, "Allahu Akbar," Islamic State types do. Correction: I should have said that Lincoln "advanced the pro-freedom and anti-slav- ery principles" of the Republi- can Party. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@yahoo.com. The way I see it Water mandates; Islamic cartoons And if you're not for freedom of expression by those whose opinions you find offensive, then what you're really for is freedom of self-expression and not the angry dinner-table discussion that is democracy. StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 150 Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico 95973, 530 895- 4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator.nielsen@ senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558- 3160, governor@governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507 Cannon House Of- fice Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Fein- stein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393-0707, fax 415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Fran- cisco 94111, 510 286-8537, fax 202 224-0454 Local Tehama County Supervisors, 527-4655 District 1, Steve Chamblin, Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District 3, Dennis Garton, Ext. 3017 District 4, Bob Williams, Ext. 3018 District 5, Burt Bundy, Ext. 3016 Red Bluff City Manager, Rich- ard Crabtree, 527-2605, Ext. 3061 Your officials Don Polson Until I read that our local and state water situation is so severe or serious that foolish and pointless efforts to restore salmon in places where they've vanished; or that efforts to manage the delta to protect the bait fish called smelt; or that ludicrous releases of water down streams to flow uselessly into the Pacific Ocean—these water use fanatics have no business mandating anything for anybody. OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, May 12, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6